“Who’s worse, Russia or the US?” is a really dumb argument to indulge. What Russia is doing in the Ukraine is objectively horrible, and the US is right to support Ukraine’s resistance regardless of the horrible things the US has done in the the past or is currently doing.
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This is vic’s deal, bless his heart. He’s somehow one step beyond and impervious to it all.
What’s your solution, Vic, to people being propagandized?
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What about the question of whether Russia is more like the US or the USSR? I can see some people saying the Soviet Union, ldo, because it’s an autocracy and some saying the United States, ldo, because it’s a market kleptocracy.
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694014896857088
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694016994091019
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694018659229706
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694020286582792
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694021838426123
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694023415488517
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694024896077838
https://twitter.com/nataliabugayova/status/1514694026334818312
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https://twitter.com/im_pulse/status/1515325747489087495?s=21&t=GI74TKFyoZIR8L_RyzOp8g
https://twitter.com/im_pulse/status/1515326775106195464?s=21&t=GI74TKFyoZIR8L_RyzOp8g
https://twitter.com/im_pulse/status/1515328024757288962?s=21&t=GI74TKFyoZIR8L_RyzOp8g
https://twitter.com/im_pulse/status/1515328953107591171?s=21&t=GI74TKFyoZIR8L_RyzOp8g
https://twitter.com/im_pulse/status/1515362025924435970?s=21&t=GI74TKFyoZIR8L_RyzOp8g
I read that Chomsky interview too. He’s so spot on on so many things, but it does seem like he has some blind spots.
Like say - maybe Ukrainians would rather come out of this as South Korea and not North Korea, and maybe it’s actually a just cause to help them to that end.
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Jews should have accepted the way the world works and raced to the showers.
If I remember my Elie Weissel correctly, the Nazis literally made the Jews run from the trains to the inprocessing.
The Treblinka II camp is not as well known as Auschwitz but it should be. 99% of the people sent there were murdered within the first two hours of arrival. It was a pure death camp. About a million people lost their lives there.
Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Scahill on the Russia-Ukraine War
Is this the interview? Seems fairly uncontroversial?
That wasn’t my reading of the interview.
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He highlights he facts that the Ukrainians seem to be more interested in a settlement than the US is.
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He points out that it’s better to focus on the policies that you can influence (I.e. the US) over that you cant.
Theres a lot there. It’s a good read
yeah the chomsky interview seems to be really misrepresented, I didn’t get “ukranians should just roll over” out of it at all. This seems to be a pretty common thing where people see someone making a positive description of the current reality and taking it as a normative argument of how things should be. Pointing out that Russia has certain advantages in this conflict isn’t lecturing the ukranians to just bend the knee and shut up.
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It’s a mix of plausible sounding arguments stitched together by straight-up lies. This, for example, is just a lie:
We can, however, look at the United States and we can see that our explicit policy — explicit — is rejection of any form of negotiations.
It’s false. Completely insupportable. Moreover, Chomsky is drawing a dichotomy between a war of annihilation and a negotiated settlement. He’s arguing that the US is driving towards a war of annihilation by rejecting any form of negotiation. But that’s completely false. I mean, peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have been going on sporadically since the beginning of the war and the US hasn’t been complaining about it. What is true is that the US declined to make unilateral concessions on NATO’s open door policy. But refusing to just give Russia whatever it wants in return for nothing is not at all the same as refusal to negotiate.
EDIT:
Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister announced at the beginning of the invasion that Russia had two main goals — two main goals. Neutralization of Ukraine and demilitarization.
Maybe not a lie, in that it’s possible that Lavroc said this once, but risible. What about the part where Russia recognized parts of Ukraine as independent countries? What about all the stuff about de-Nazification and Ukraine not being a real country? It’s either outright dishonesty or he’s like a Westworld robot who just cannot perceive anything that can’t be hammered into the predetermined narrative.
EDIT2: Just beyond parody:
President Wilson set up his own ministry of public information, meaning lies to the public, to try to encourage Americans to hate everything German. So the Boston Symphony Orchestra wouldn’t play Beethoven, for example.
Then it goes on. Reagan had what’s called an Office of Public Diplomacy, meaning an office to lie to the public and the media about what we’re doing. But it’s not a hard task for the government.
And the reason was actually stated, rather clearly, by the public relations officer of the United Fruit Company, back in 1954…
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Chomskys statement that the usa is explicitly against any negotiations is utter horseshit and makes me not want to read past that point. Following that up with taking russias statements on demilitarization seriously after their genocidal actions in other towns means I won’t bother further.
It’s a truly awful interview at that point.
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Victor make your point or move on
I guess if you pressed him Chomsky would say that the US/NATO is effecively pushing Ukraine away from the bargaining table by continuing to arm them.
Of course that means Ukraine accepting becoming a hellish Stasi-state like Belarus or the occupied Donbas territories. Probably even worse, because Putin will want to punish them and erase their identity. Chomsky seems to give no consideration to this.
A common trope of his seems to be that life under autocratic tyranny and life under a liberal democracy are interchangeable - and that people only fight for life under a liberal democracy because they’ve been egged on by The West. No one fights because they got a taste of a better life, and no credit is given to helping them fight for that life vs. trying to subjugate them. It all seems to be the same to guys like Chomsky and Mearsheimer.
Would Chomsky and Mearsheimer’s views on this war change if nukes didn’t exist? Maybe Mearsheimer would accept moving in to completely defeat Russia. But it sure seems like Chomsky would still blame the US and try to nudge Ukraine toward accepting life as a subjugated vassal state.
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Here’s a quote from the document that sets out an explicit policy - explicit - of rejecting any form of negotiations and committing ourselves to a war of annihilation:
The United States… reaffirms its full support for international efforts, including in the Normandy Format, aimed at negotiating a diplomatic resolution to the Russian-led conflict in eastern Ukraine on the basis of international law, including the UN Charter. The United States supports Ukraine’s efforts to use the Crimea Platform to focus international attention and action on the humanitarian and security costs of Russia’s occupation of Crimea with the aim of peacefully restoring Ukraine’s control over this territory in accordance with international law. Together, we call on Russia to recommit to the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and engage genuinely in conflict resolution efforts to end the war.
EDIT: Link is here
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lol You didn’t come up with that line. You just follow the same propaganda.